Vijayawada: Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy has directed officials to make the 46,000km-stretch of state roads pothole-free by June, 2022.
The CM was chairing a high-level meeting on road repair and restoration works, attended by minister for municipal administration Botsa Satyanarayana and top officials, at his Camp Office here on Monday. He said officials must concentrate attention on road maintenance works.
“Make the entire stretch of 46,000km roads as a unit and identify those that were badly damaged due to rains and start filling up potholes immediately. Take up road carpeting works. Do these works irrespective of whether a road is of gram panchayats, municipalities or municipal corporations. Take care of all bridges, flyovers and road-over-bridges,” the CM said.
He said these works can be done on Nadu-Nedu mode instead of developing new roads. He asked officials to take photos of the roads before and after the repair and restoration works.
The officials told the CM they would start the works once the rain stopped by December and sounded confident they can complete the works by June, 2022. By end of November, they would complete the finalisation of tenders for road works to a stretch of 8,268km.
The CM called for an action plan for taking up such works. “Union roads and highways minister Nitin Gadkari would be visiting AP in December. He wants officials to bring all pending projects to his notice to resolve them fast,” the CM said.
The chief minister asked the officials to act firmly with contractors who got projects funded by the New Development Bank but failed to start work. “Serve them notices and blacklist them if they failed to respond in a week’s time,” the CM said.
